Note: This review contains spoilers.
Continuity is extremely important in a film and a film series. Continuity is a language of engagement between the filmmakers and the audience, where we are entrusted with details and information that are rewarded later when those details are utilized for character development and plot progression. It allows for more complex plots with dynamic characters, rewarding engagement and improving your experience with the film (generally, if the filmmakers hold up their end well enough). Yeah, that's the film-nerd over-explanation of things, and it's right enough, but sometimes you can get wild with it and come out with something just as fun and engaging.
Enter X-Men: Days of Future Past, the follow up to First Class that addresses that film's issues with continuity by saying loud and proud "fuck it", and we are all the better off for it. The film opens with a post-apocalyptic future where it's eternally night and mutants are hunted down, killed, or otherwise thrown in concentration camps. The remaining mutants -- including Wolverine, Professor X, and Magneto, all played by their original actors -- group up to try and use Kitty Pride's newfound ability to send people's consciousness back in time to change the past and prevent the horrific future. Wolverine becomes the obvious choice because apparently doing this can seriously fuck up your brain, and Wolverine's healing abilities negate all of that nonsense. Other than the fact that in no way did X-Men: The Last Stand, the most recent film in the original X-Men series, even hint that this future would come of it (it did the opposite, as a matter of fact), the main issue with this whole plot is that it tries its best to act as though both iterations of the X-Men franchise can coexist, when that would seem extremely unlikely. For one, if there was someone in the 70s that was developing anti-mutant robots, and if he was able to accomplish this in the 70s, then what is the point of a part of the plot in the original X-Men, which has a senator campaigning against mutants in a much more civil manner? Especially since, as this film suggests, Magneto was involved in the JFK assassination. What I'm tapping into here is largely tone, a levity in the original films that these newer films would imply to be unrealistic given their place on the timeline. (As a quick, spoilery side-note: seeing Jean Grey at the end and played by her original actress in the "current" timeline has me all sorts of confused about how the new Dark Phoenix film is going to work into all of this -- my guess is it doesn't).
The thing is, none of this matters. It would, if they were building a compelling world around mutant-human relations, but rather this film and many of the films in this franchise have had a focus on inter-character development, their personal philosophies tumbling over one another in sometimes violent ways. The Professor X and Magneto development I wanted in the last film is, for the most part, here in this one. It is exciting to see Professor X seethe with anger and attempts at hate toward one of his closest friend, while Magneto plays the calmer side of things, attempting to level Professor X's new, darker disposition. It was a smart character choice to make Professor X the hostile one and Magneto the calmer one. Magneto has known suffering all along, has literally lived and struggled within it, and uses it as primary motivation for his campaign for the mutant master race: if its us or them who has to suffer, it will be them, because I won't suffer when I'm the evolved one. Professor X, however, is just noticing the suffering he seemed so oblivious towards in the previous movie. It isn't so much that he didn't know it to be there, it is that he has experienced it first hand now. He has seen his students drafted into the Vietnam war, seen his friend involved in the murder of a standing President, and lost another friend to a similar philosophy because his empathizing with her was only half true. He reflects the times here as he did in the 60s: he is disillusioned by the horrors the late 60s and 70s brought them, and now shoots up a brown liquid that allows his legs to work again (silly, but acceptable), but numbs his powers to the point of no longer functioning. The irony, then, is that it is Wolverine who has to come in and make him believe again.
There is a lot of back and forth between good ideas and bad ideas. As emotional as it was seeing James McAvoy and Patrick Stuart talk through time, it nullifies the point of having Wolverine there in the first place: the reversal of roles. Still, we get a lot of great mileage through Wolverine, gruff and unfiltered, as he tries to convince those who would one day be his friends that he's from the future and that they will be some of the people he respects most. It's funny and heartwarming, and works well. Likewise, Mystique as the linchpin here seems both worthwhile and misguided. Mystique, having ties between Professor X and Magneto, is the perfect conductor for a lot of the crackling plot to pop and sizzle on top of, but Mystique's importance to the antagonist (she can change her appearance, but the antagonist wants to use her cells to do, basically, what Rogue's power is) seems to be an oversight that may be necessary for the plot to work well, but one that feels a tad bit muddled nonetheless.
Rarely in this day and age, though, is a movie just so darn fun that a lot of these inconsistencies fall by the wayside. Characters feel well executed and engaging (even side characters like Quicksilver -- one of the highlights of this movie -- are excellent), the plot keeps up a good pace, and its sense of continuity is far more fun than it is logical. I was shocked how quickly the film felt despite watching the extended cut at 2 1/2 hours. It isn't perfect, and it doesn't reach any kind of artistic heights a few other super hero films have made, but it is easily one of the best and most fun X-Men films to date, getting right what makes this franchise so great: character.
8.0
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